Robert Stein (1950)

Robert Stein (1972)

Robert Stein (2000s)

About Me

editor, publisher, media critic and journalism teacher,
is a former Chairman of the American Society of Magazine Editors, and author of “Media Power: Who Is Shaping Your Picture of the World?” Before the war in Iraq, he wrote in The New York Times: “I see a generation gap in the debate over going to war in Iraq. Those of us who fought in World War II know there was no instant or easy glory in being part of 'The Greatest Generation,' just as we knew in the 1990s that stock-market booms don’t last forever.
We don’t have all the answers, but we want to spare our children and grandchildren from being slaughtered by politicians with a video-game mentality."
This is not meant to extol geezer wisdom but suggest that, even in our age of 24/7 hot flashes, something can be said for perspective.
The Web is a wide space for spreading news, but it can also be a deep well of collective memory to help us understand today’s world. In olden days, tribes kept village elders around to remind them with which foot to begin the ritual dance. Start the music.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Teaching Tony Curtis to Be Suave

At 82, he's still a star but not in the grand style, which never did fit Bernie Schwartz from the Bronx, as he goes down memory lane for the Guardian:

"He's rounder in the face than he was, his once-magnificent hair is now a pale white fuzz and he's a little more rotund than you'd expect, but once you get him rolling, he's all bada-bing, whatcha lookin' at me for! He's still a kid in all the best ways, and glimpses of the star of masterpieces such as Sweet Smell of Success and Some Like It Hot are still readily available."

In "Some Like It Hot," Tony Curtis did a Cary Grant impression to woo Marilyn Monroe. The year before, in 1958, I had given him a little lesson in how to be suave.

As the new editor of Redbook, I had met his then-wife Janet Leigh, who was not happy with a cover story about Tony we had just run under the title, "I Grew Up Stealing." But she relented to the point of an invitation to visit them on a trip to Hollywood the following month.

My wife, new baby and I arrived at their Beverly Hills mansion with a circular driveway full of antique cars. Inside, we met the children, a sweet little girl named Kelly and a baby sister, Jamie Lee. As Janet took my wife on a tour of the house, Tony took me aside.

He gave me an abashed Bernie Schwartz smile and admitted he didn't know to make the martini my wife had asked for. I gave him a demonstration of the fine art of handling gin, vermouth and lemon peel, a social skill he would put to good use in the following decades as an international movie star.

Being handsome, he tells his Guardian interviewer, took him out of Depression poverty into the good life. But along the way, he learned a thing or two about acting and enough about paintings to impress the Museum of Modern Art. Those Bronx kids knew how to make the most of their opportunities.